The background and consequences of the recent violent destruction of the Kennedy Road organisation of the Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) movement of shack dwellers by a combination of gangs recruited for the purpose, police action and local and regional ANC structures needs to be analysed at some depth. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2002, Mamdani wrote an essay entitled ‘Making sense of political violence in Africa’, in which he argued that to distinguish between cultural and political identities is to differentiate between self-identification and state-identification. He further pointed out that to historicise political identity through linking it to political power, is to acknowledge that all political identities are historically transitory and all require a form of the state to be reproduced. Read the rest of this entry »

Most of us probably havent even heard of cassiterite – the mineral used in electronics especially laptops. There was a time when laptops used to be hugely expensive. Now you can pick up one for a couple of hundred pounds. I dont know whether there is a relationship between the cheap price of laptops and the slave mining of cassiterite but it is quite possible. Read the rest of this entry »

More than a billion people eat fewer than 1,900 calories per day. The majority of them work in agriculture, about 60 percent are women or girls, and most are in rural Africa and Asia. Ending their hunger is one of the few unimpeachably noble tasks left to humanity, and we live in a rare time when there is the knowledge and political will to do so. The question is, how? Conventional wisdom suggests that if people are hungry, there must be a shortage of food, and all we need do is figure out how to grow more. Read the rest of this entry »